Sunday, October 15, 2006

Kid Stuff II

Another memory I have growing up was a fascinating picture I would often sneak away from my parents as a kid.

No...not THAT kind of picture. Sheesh.

This one I would take out of the glove box of our car and spread out on the living room floor. I could stare at it forever.

It had so much detail and perspective on the place I was growing up. I couldn't take it all in.

And it had a wicked looking green tint to it.

What was it?

Nothing less than an aerial photo of my hometown with a street-map overlay.

Yeah. Go to Google Maps and click the satellite view and you can see the world. Not so exciting anymore is it?

Anyway, apart from Google Maps ruining my childhood...it was really neat at the time. I could take in places of town that we never drove in, see the refineries, the storage tanks, how the city was laid out. I would imagine I was a pilot and that was my view as I flew over in my P-51 Mustang fighter.

It allows you to select a location, and download USGS aerial photography and topographical maps from Microsoft's free TerraServer website. You can save the file on your local drive and the zoom, scroll, add routes and text and other fun stuff. Take some time to review the help-file and check out all the download, image selection, contrast, GPS, and topo options. There's a lot in there to fiddle with!

If you are really groovin a flashback, I bet you are clever enough to save the image file, then import it into Photoshop to give it that awesome green photo-tint the originals had when we were growing up.

Credits

Why this? It is the simple blog of a Last Exile fan and is intended to express the enjoyment we derive from studio Gonzo's production. Although we closely relate with those characters, we aren't them in real life. We just want to keep the memory of these incredible young kids alive. So go buy Gonzo's Last Exile DVD's!